Pres. Biden's administration is pulling out all the stops to ensure that no one ever finds out what his so-called "voter access" executive order is up to.
Dubbed “Bidenbucks” by concerned citizens who suspect that Biden is using taxpayer money to further his campaign for reelection, Biden’s 2021 Executive Order 14019 is allegedly about “Promoting Access to Voting.”
However, the administration has doggedly rebuffed efforts by members of Congress, watchdog groups, conservative think tanks and news outlets simply seeking to learn the details of how the executive order’s mandates are being implemented by federal government agencies.
Despite billing the executive order as a benign initiative, the Biden administration is taking extraordinary measures to keep Americans in the dark about it:
What’s more, the administration is fighting all the way to the brink of the Supreme Court against one lawsuit seeking to derail the executive order before November's elections.
In its efforts to keep Bidenbucks shrouded in secrecy, the administration has invoked presidential privilege on at least two occasions, one involving a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, The Daily Signal reports:
“The specifics of those ‘bold ideas’ and ‘stakeholders’ [of Bidenbucks] isn’t knowable right now because ‘upon the advice of the White House Counsel’s Office, the information is being withheld under the presidential communications privilege,’ according to a cover letter to The Daily Signal from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.’”
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“Separately, the Justice Department has invoked presidential privilege to shield documents about Biden’s order in a public records lawsuit brought by the Foundation for Government Accountability, a watchdog group.”
Voter integrity groups like America First Legal Foundation have also filed lawsuits attempting to obtain information about the Bidenbucks scheme, the Heritage Oversight Project (which has filed its own FOIA lawsuit) reports.
The Biden Administration has even failed to come clean with House Congressional committees.
Last month, on May 15, as part of his committee’s investigation, House Administration Committee Chairman Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) sent a letter to 15 Biden administration cabinet members in order to obtain information about their respective agencies’ implementation of the executive order. Chairman Steil gave the agency heads until May 29 to respond.
On Thursday, two weeks after the deadline had come and gone with no response, Chairman Steil issued subpoenas to the 15 cabinet members, in order to compel them to provide the information he requested. They are required to comply with the subpoena by June 26, 2024.
“Evidence already shows that the Executive Order partners federal employees with partisan advocates to register voters ahead of the 2024 elections,” Chairman Bryan Steil said in a statement announcing the subpoenas:
“This Executive Order is another attempt by the Biden Administration to tilt the scales ahead of 2024. I will continue working to provide transparency and accountability on this Administration’s latest scheme as Congress did not appropriate taxpayer funds for partisan activities.”
“What they have done is weaponize all federal agencies on behalf of President Biden’s reelection campaign,” Steil (R-WI) said during a hearing on noncitizen voting and foreign influence.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee has also launched a probe into Biden’s executive order. Last month, on May 13, Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter to the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB), setting a deadline of May 28, 2024 for the director to provide the following five items:
1. Explanation of the constitutional or statutory authority Pres. Biden relied on in the drafting of the executive order;
2. All strategic plans received by the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy from agencies as required by the executive order;
3. A list of all approved third-party organizations as designated in Section 3(a)(iii)(B) of the executive order;
4. All documents pertaining to the criteria for approving a third-party organization under the executive order; and
5. All White House and OMB documents and communications regarding the drafting of the executive order.
To date, more than two weeks past the May 28 deadline, the OMB director has still not responded.
“We’ve called on OMB to provide answers about what federal agencies are doing in order to hold them accountable,” Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer told CNSNews Monday, in an exclusive statement voicing his concerns:
“President Biden’s EO is an overreach of the executive branch’s constitutional authority and disregards the Constitution’s federalist election system. The states set the time, manner, and place of their own elections, and this EO must be looked at seriously.
“Federal agencies cannot engage in any activity outside the agency’s authorized mission, including federal voting access and registration activities.”
On May 7, House Committee on Small Business Chairman Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas) subpoenaed the special advisor to the Small Business Administration (SBA) and SBA’s chief of staff because of the agency’s refusal to comply with the Committee’s ongoing investigation into potential electioneering activities by the SBA as part of the Bidenbucks initiative. Chairman Williams is probing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that SBA entered into with Michigan’s Secretary of State to register voters.
“The committee has given these two individuals the opportunity to speak with us voluntarily, but this appears to be the only way to get them to comply with our constitutionally mandated oversight responsibilities,” Chairman Williams said in a statement.
“At every step, the Small Business Administration has obstructed our investigation into the Biden Administration’s misuse of taxpayer dollars for campaign efforts,” said Subcommittee Chairman Jeff Van Duyne (R-Pa.).
“The SBA’s MOU with the Michigan Department of State is a blatant attempt by the Biden Administration to illegally use the SBA as an extension of the President’s campaign,” Subcommittee Chair Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) added:
“They are working to elect Democrats, which is abundantly clear considering registration efforts are targeted at cities like Detroit and other urban areas. And if this is being done in Michigan, we can make an educated assumption that it is also happening in other swing states.”
Even when the Biden Administration does provide documents in response to an information request about the executive order, they’re outrageously redacted.
In one instance, a document provided to The Daily Signal by the White House says “We look forward to working with you to” – and the rest of the communication is blacked out.
In an even more egregious case, a 2021 message from a USDA deputy undersecretary says only “This is” before the rest of the text is redacted.
Information about the USDA’s involvement in Bidenbucks is of particular interest due to concerns that the agency will focus its voter registration efforts on predominantly Democrat voter groups, like Welfare recipients, by issuing letters to the state agencies that administer SNAP and WIC programs, instructing them to carry out voter-registration activities with federal funds.
The Biden administration is also refusing to be transparent about a “listening session” with partisan, far-left organizations held regarding the executive order, as RealClearInvestigations explains:
“In ongoing FOIA litigation against the Justice Department, the Foundation for Government Accountability obtained an email between the White House Counsel’s Office and numerous agency officials regarding a July 2021 ‘Agency Listening Session’ apparently led by ‘Civil and Voting Rights Organizations.’ The email includes a roster of ‘advocates.’”
Among the numerous progressive organizations participating in the meeting were several well-known groups:
Aside from this partial list of left-wing attendees, virtually nothing is known about what took place at the session, despite the multiple requests and lawsuits due to the Biden administration’s secrecy. Details of the session are important, because Biden’s executive order says that federal agencies should partner with “nonpartisan” third parties – which all of the groups attending the meeting clearly were not.
The administration has also steadfastly refused to explain to House Republicans why Pres. Biden’s executive order is “nearly identical” to a “federal election takeover plan” published in December 2020 by Demos, one of the radical left-wing think tanks that attended the 2021 listening session.
“This EO’s strategy appears to enable the Biden administration to use federal government resources, funded by American taxpayers, to circumvent newly-passed state election integrity laws,” Republicans’ January 2022 information request sent to OMB’s acting director notes. “The Biden Administration’s ongoing efforts to federalize state-run elections will erode these important protections,” the letter explains.
Last year, on September 28, a group of Senate Republicans chastised Pres. Biden, in a letter voicing concerns over the White House’s stubborn refusal to respond to their previous demands for transparency regarding the use of American taxpayer dollars to carry out Executive Order 14019.
The Biden administration’s refusal to be transparent about Executive Order 14019 isn’t limited to just its true purpose and implementation, however.
Despite repeated requests from Congress, the administration has not provided a plausible rationalization for the executive order's constitutionality.
More than two dozen Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers are suing the Biden administration over the executive order on the grounds that it violates the Constitution in multiple respects, Fox News explains:
“The 27 GOP lawmakers, members of the state Freedom Caucus, argued that the order is essentially an executive get-out-the-vote effort targeting key demographics to benefit the president’s political party and own re-election, which they argue is unconstitutional with Congress having never enacted a law that grants such an action from the Oval Office.”
“The executive action taken by the President nullifies the votes of the individual legislators, violates the Electors Clause, violates the Elections Clause, and deprives the legislators of their particular rights," according to the lawsuit.
On May 28, the secretaries of state in West Virginia, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Wyoming filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court asking the Court to rule that Executive Order No. 14019 is unconstitutional and violates the exclusive authority the Constitution grants to the states to regulate elections in their states.
The plaintiffs have filed a petition for a writ of certiorari, seeking to go straight to the Supreme Court with their case so that it will be decided before November’s elections. Last Wednesday, the Supreme Court announced that, on September 30, it will entertain the arguments for it to consider intervening in the case.
Even if the Supreme Court does take up the case, it’s unlikely that any decision will be issued before elections are held on November 5. And, even if the executive order is derailed by the High Court, the Bidenbucks scheme will have worked its will for the past three years shrouded in secrecy, so the damage to the integrity of the upcoming elections will have already been done.
The administration’s obstinate efforts to cover up details about Pres. Biden’s controversial executive order raise several serious questions, such as:
One driving force behind the administration’s cover-up is that Biden’s executive order may well be breaking the law, as more than a dozen state attorneys general, along with other critics of Biden’s executive order, have warned.
The Hatch Act is just one of the laws the executive order may be violating, the attorneys general explained in a September 28, 2022 letter to Pres. Biden urging him to rescind his mandate:
“In carrying out your EO, these agencies and their employees could also violate other laws such as the Hatch Act, designed to keep federal agencies led by political appointees from engaging in political activities to benefit one political party over another, as well as the Antideficiency Act which prohibits executive agencies from spending funds Congress has not authorized, or accepting volunteer services from ‘approved’ third-party organizations as your executive order directs.”
Several congressional Republicans have joined the state attorneys general and government watchdog groups expressing concern that Executive Order 14019 has federal agencies and employees engaging in electioneering and other partisan political activity, in violation of laws, such as the Hatch Act.
But, until the Biden administration decides – or is forced – to cease its cover-up of the details of its Bidenbucks scheme, it would be hard to prove whether or not laws have been broken.